Three times since leaving Egypt the Hebrews grapple with the possibility of dying in the desert. Three times since they were brought out of slavery the Hebrews murmur amongst themselves.

Today’s episode occurs just after the Hebrews grumble about how they will be fed in a place with no discernable source of food. God provides manna and quail. Without any transition, with no discernable length of time between stories God’s people find themselves once again faced with eradication. The Hebrews realize that their stock of water has run out. Chaos and fear grip the camp. Irrational accusations fly at Moses. And just as before, God responds. God instructs Moses strikes the rock and water comes gushing out.

There’s a similar pattern to what we’ve heard before: a threat to the people’s survival. They begin to grumble. Moses hears them and relays their concern to God. God meets their need.

But in this story something has shifted. No longer do the Hebrews murmur, one to another. Instead the people bring the fight directly to Moses. Their anger is so intense that Moses fears for his life, wondering if the people will stone him. This time there are no abstract and extended complaints. In Exodus 17 they get right to the point, “Give us water to drink.”

This story is compact. There’s no detail and the whole narrative takes up only seven verses. It’s told in clipped, anxious phrases. The tension is palpable as fears have intensified into violence. And something else has changed. In the previous two accounts of miraculous provision God has put the Hebrews to tests of faithfulness. This time the tables have turned. Now it is the Hebrews who put God in the docks.

Testing God. Ready to stone Moses. There’s something risky in this story, the feeling you get when someone stands too close to the edge of a cliff. You have to wonder, how will this god respond? How will the god who made water stand up like walls, who sent the angel of death to slaughter a generation of Egyptian boys, the god who brought locust and hail and boils, how will this god respond to a thankless, forgetful people?

You brace yourself, but instead of fire, instead of rocks from the sky and pillars of salt, God shows up. God stands in front of them, right there, before them. He gives them what they need. God holds up reminders of the things done in the past. God says, “This is who I am. This is who I am.”

When I read these stories I am tempted interpret them as a verdict against an obstinate people with horrible memories and bad tempers. But then I remember the god of Egypt, the only god these people have ever known. The god of Egypt was Pharaoh – a human god, flesh and bone, but one you could see, one that was stable and visible. Pharaoh was a god predictable in his maintenance of power, who utilized affliction and the murder of newborns in order to preserve social hierarchy. The only god the Hebrews have known is the god of capital and slavery and coercive power.

So it is that the wilderness wandering is the start of a new relationship for the Hebrews with this god they have never known, never before encountered. This isn’t just a shifting of allegiances. Instead, this god unveils a new way of life, new expectations. This isn’t a god like Pharaoh.

While they were slaves the Hebrews scrambled for what little was given them. Now they are discovering a god who gives them exactly what they need.

While they were slaves the Hebrews were commodities, a means towards amassing more wealth and power. Now they encounter a god who does not horde.

While they were slaves the Hebrews were worked relentlessly without ceasing. Now they meet a god who demands their rest.

While they were slaves the Hebrews knew a god who was static, human, like them. Now they meet a god who is unrestricted by nature, and in fact wields power over the natural world.

In each of these stories God reveals to the people how things are different. This new relationship requires more than everyone looking out for herself and working as hard as she can. It means obedience, listening to God’s voice and following these strange rules that will make them different from other people.

After a lifetime with Pharaoh as their god is it any wonder that these people are anxious, distrustful, and filled with fear? To such a people God helps them remember. He recreates the scene of the crossing of the Red Sea. Calling forth an assembly of elders, Moses takes the same staff that parted the seas, and once again God brings life from death. God doesn’t tell them, God shows them. God doesn’t talk about their need, God gives them something to drink. God doesn’t say “I am here.” God appears.

Maybe that’s why God answers these cries in such unusual ways, as the Hebrews are left scratching there heads. What is this white stuff on the ground? Why is God using a rock? Why is he throwing a stick into that bitter water? It is not only provision but introduction, an introductory course on how the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob operates.

“Is Yahweh among us or not?” Maybe it was the right question to ask. To question Pharaoh would mean certain death. But here, too, god is not like Pharaoh. With Amy Erickson I wonder if “It may be that the people work to shape God’s character just as God works to shape that of the people. The mutual testing in the wilderness yields a people with a uniquely articulated faith, along with a unique, fundamentally counter-cultural god…”[1]

It’s no wonder, then, that we hear the recounting of the rock of Horeb in the psalms. These are the songs God’s people sang to each other to remind them of this time when they came to know God, when they asked God not to speak of love, but to show them. And God did. This was the story they told to their children, to their children’s children to help each generation encounter this strange god, a god not like Pharaoh.

Here again the psalm:

Remember the wonderful works he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he uttered,
O offspring of his servant Abraham, children of Jacob, his chosen ones.
Then he brought Israel out with silver and gold, and there was no one among their tribes who stumbled.
Egypt was glad when they departed, for dread of them had fallen upon it.
He spread a cloud for a covering, and fire to give light by night.
They asked, and he brought quails, and gave them food from heaven in abundance.
He opened the rock, and water gushed out; it flowed through the desert like a river.

It comes as no surprise, then, that in 1 Corinthians Paul identifies the rock from Exodus 17 as Christ. After all, Jesus, too, was not what was expected. He, too, came to show us what God looks like. Jesus before us on the cross, a god dying while soldiers mocked, telling him to be like Pharaoh, to get down from there and put them all in their place. Instead God lays down his life. Instead, God defeats death. On the cross Jesus doesn’t tell us, he shows us: “This is who I am. This is who I am.”

This is a theme that will continue to reverberate through the history of Israel, right down to you and me. The people of God will continue to forget. We continue to flee to the security and consistency of idols, worthless but easily understood and predictable. And God will keep showing up. God will keep standing in front of us. At every juncture God will reenact the stories of God’s love. God will hold up a staff. God will bring forth bread. God will give us something to drink. God will say, “This is who I am. This is who I am.”

“So, what’s your plan? You going to keep working your way up to bigger and better churches and church leadership positions?”

This was the end of a conversation I had with one of my parishoners at the church where I am the newly minted Minister to Children. Over the past few weeks it has become clear how difficult it is for most people to get their heads around my recent change in ministry roles. About a month ago I went from being a full-time associate at a slightly smaller church to my current part-time role in children’s ministry. There were many reasons for this change, among them that my husband will soon be going back to graduate school so a ministry call closer to home with fewer hours makes sense for our family. This church is in the town where I live so no more commute. And the pay is good.

Before all of that I actually feel a call to ministry with children and to their families. I’m still coming to grips with the reality that children’s ministry isn’t a hallowed position in the church. It’s not a call that most churches feel requires any particular accreditation or theological training. Children’s ministers work primarily with a population that has very little influence in church leadership, produces no revenue for the church, and usually makes worship more complicated and uncomfortable for the people who do hold power – the adults.

I wonder if that’s why this is a good place for me to be right now. I like power. When I overhear through an open door our lead pastor talking with our minister of adult discipleship about overarching church visioning, coming up with mission and stewardship statements, or delving into church/city relations I feel this pull, this desire to be back at the center of church life. Sometimes I feel sad. And then I remember that Jesus surrounded himself with people who didn’t have credentials or education. Jesus put himself in the way of children, and children found their way to him. On days when I desperately want to sit at the “adult table,” when my office is inundated with color sheets and children’s storybook Bibles, I remember that this is probably the church office that Jesus would choose.

My parishoner isn’t alone. I think most of us think of church ministry as something that happens in stages. We leave behind youth or children for associate or adult discipleship. After a few years this leads to a rural or solo pastorate. After a few wins at this level we may move on to a smaller staff, then finally on to a large multi-staff church.

Now in my second call I find myself drawn from the metaphor of stages to that of seasons. This is a good season for me to be in children’s ministry. Right now I think about children theologically but also from my experience because I have young children. I’m also learning to notice children more, to think about how they see and experience our worship space, how they encounter Scripture and liturgy. I think about the gifts they bring our congregation. And I see them where I didn’t before – in our church, on the street, in grocery stores.

Today I told my parishoner that I am called to this church in this ministry in this season. And I like to think that one day, even after a solo pastorate or a multi-staff parish, that I might find my way back to children’s ministry again.

Dear Lord, my office is a holy mess – coloring sheets, shovels, mission project donations, books, bulletins, bubble machine, folders, missionary newsletters. God, you are here, waiting, in all of it. I look around and see doors to you. We put them up around the church, hoping that someone, a child, a mother, an alcoholic, a fiance, a teenager, a teacher, might try the door and find that behind it is you – just a bit of you. Like Moses squinting through closed eyes to see your back as you passed by. Like the jars that danced between the sacrifice. Like a tower of light, a pillar of cloud. Just a bit of you, hoping that we will be back again to know you better, to know more of you. Builder and Sustainer, help me to construct good doors today, doors that will help us be curious about your kingdom, your face, your hands, your people, and your friendship.

The Mennonite church, like many churches, is struggling, questioning, and fracturing over if and how to include gays and lesbians in our common life. Recalling this past week’s Gospel lesson I find myself longing to be present with the disciples when Jesus “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45). Oh, to be able to sit and ask Jesus my questions, to bring to him the current debate within our church. Oh, to let him set these things right.

But as I read further in my Bible I am reminded that it took only a couple decades before the disciples are once again mired in conflict over Scriptural interpretation, justice, inclusion, ethics, and freedom. The questions at hand had to do with the Gentiles. Would Gentiles be included as they were? Or would they be required to submit to a conversion to Judaism first, becoming circumcised and eating clean foods? It is to the apostles gathered in Jerusalem in Acts 15 that my thoughts turn as I see the divisions occurring in our church.

I would have been one of those apostles on the fence over the Gentile question. I’m careful, and a rule-follower. And I care deeply about interpretation of the biblical text. What often gets portrayed in moments of church conflict like the one we face now are two drastically different convictions bracketing a spectrum of ambivalence. But what if, instead, the conversation was much richer, more nuanced?

I am concerned by some of the arguments I hear from progressive brothers and sisters. I am concerned when the Old Testament is dismissed outright, when I hear the citation of restrictions on tattoos or shell fish. Following Jesus, I want a hermeneutic that takes seriously that not one jot or tittle has been lost from the law (Matt 5:18). Even though the New Testament has more to say about money than sex, I want to bring both of these facets of my life in line with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I want others to help me read Scripture in a way that helps me to think about and live faithfully even when it goes against my human nature to, say, protect my children or my own life at any cost.

When I hear my traditionalist sisters and brothers I am concerned. I am concerned about “plain text readings” that fail to acknowledge inconsistencies between Pauline epistles, or between Jesus and Paul. I am concerned that we often overlook God’s tactic approval of polygamous relationships in the Old Testament, the theological problems with Paul’s appeal to the natural, or the revival of Scriptural arguments that have been used exclude women, children, and black/brown Christians. I am troubled that despite our core conviction of following Jesus’ teachings of non-violence, our church is rising up over the membership of gays and lesbians while for decades we have remained silent over the membership of active members of the military.

I am troubled when any of us fails to recognize how deeply our readings of Scriptures are formed by prejudice, relationships, personal experiences, communities, and institutions. In a recent conversation at my church on how we read the Bible on sexuality someone in my small group honestly confessed that they didn’t think much about it. Same-sex relationships were an everyday part of his reality and it didn’t make sense to him to go back and look at Scripture to figure them out.

I appreciated this honesty. Most of us are not ready to say that we lead from our experience. Some of us think we can “get outside” these influences rather than doing the hard work of naming and assessing what we bring to our reading of Scripture. We may ignore that the Holy Spirit speaks to us through some of these influences, and that others need to be confronted as counter to the life of Jesus.

I call the Mennonite church home because it is a church committed to one cry – “Jesus is Lord.” The rest of the work is ours. During my first round of graduate school I, like many students who grew up in evangelicalism, felt a draw to two radically different denominations – the Roman Catholic Church and the Mennonite church. Looking back I can see that both churches offered vastly different answers to the same question as to how we grapple with the complexity of Scripture. Some of my friends put their faith in the Holy Spirit’s working through the Magisterium, the hierarchy of the Catholic church. Others, like me, found the Spirit at work in the church on the ground, through the messy, difficult discernment of people gathered together.

I believe, and still believe, that God is present here. I need others who think differently than me to help me see what I cannot see from where I stand. I need others to ask the hard questions. I need a community in whom to put my trust, to help me know how and when to act even though questions and complexity remain.

This week I find myself longing to speak not only to Jesus but also to Paul and Silas. I want to ask them how they decided that a couple verses from Amos held more authority than the entire Levitical code (Acts 15). I want to know how Peter held together his vision of the sheet with unclean food with his rigorous training in Torah (Acts 10). I want to know what was said or done to evaluate that “consent of the whole church” had occurred. I want to know how the church mourned those who left, those who could not accept the radical new work of God grafting the Gentiles into Israel.

I want these answers. I want clarity and explanation. But I also know this is not what we’ve been given. Instead, we’ve been given the Holy Spirit, an Advocate. And we’ve been given one another.

You thought the blessing would come in the staying. In casting your lot with this place, these people. In learning the art of remaining, of abiding.

And now you stand on the threshold again. The home you had hoped for, had ached for, is behind you— not yours, after all.

The clarity comes as small comfort, perhaps, but it comes: illumination enough for the next step.

As you go, may you feel the full weight of your gifts gathered up in your two hands, the complete measure of their grace in your heart that knows there is a place for them, for the treasure that you bear.

I promise you there is a blessing in the leaving, in the dust shed from your shoes as you walk toward home— not the one you left but the one that waits ahead, the one that already reaches out for you in welcome, in gladness for the gifts that none but you could bring.

Three days had passed and she was overwhelmed with exhaustion. Mary could hardly tell if she was dead or alive. But what was the difference now? He was gone. Just like that, this little spark of hope he had kindled in her was snuffed out.

And now it was time to clean up the mess. Mary knew this routine. Go to the tomb. Try to keep the stench at bay, but go early before the smell of the body overwhelms you. There were so many deaths these days. But this was the hardest one of all.

She went as soon as Sabbath ended, reaching the tomb before anyone was in the streets. It was so dark she could barely see in front of her. At first she thought the sleeplessness and the grief must be playing a trick on her eyes, but as she got closer she could see it had really happened. Her heart went into her throat and she chocked out a cry. Someone from that angry, seething crowd had been here to desecrate the grave, to further turn the knife of her loss. Or maybe it was grave robbers. It seemed like hours that she stood there before the gapping mouth of the tomb, shaking so badly she couldn’t move. And then, in an instance, she turned and ran.

—

So begins our Easter Gospel. It’s a story that starts in the darkness. It’s a chaotic scene one accompanied by screaming, weeping, loved ones running back and forth. It’s a story about expectation, what you think you’re going to get. It’s a story about expecting to find Death but instead stumbling face-first into Life.

Today’s story continues with Mary leaving the tomb to tell the other disciples what she’s seen. They return to confirm that, indeed, the body of Jesus is gone. But curious things have happened. If grave robber had been here why would they leave the only thing worth any money – the grave clothes. And who would undress a corpse just to steal it, neatly leaving a piece of cloth folded in a corner? The two disciples confirm Mary’s story and then return home.

The first to encounter the risen Jesus will not be one of these inner-circle disciples. Instead this honor is saved for a woman, Mary Magdalene who plays only a minor role in John’s Gospel. Weeping beside the tomb she finally musters the courage to look inside herself. And to her utter shock there sit two angels who ask her, “why are you weeping?” Hoping for some answers she asks them where they have laid Jesus. Then she hears the question repeated from outside the tomb.

Maybe the voice seemed familiar. Maybe it was a whisper, disguising the speaker’s identity. Mary doesn’t recognize its source. “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”

We know what Mary came to see. We know what she anticipated. She came to see the corpse of a wise teacher, a brave revolutionary, a man who died for the cause. She came to reconcile herself to her crushed ideas about Jesus, to bury her hope. In an instant in one word, in the speaking of her name, those expectations are shattered. Jesus is not dead; he is risen.

This question to Mary, sitting there in the pit of her grief, reflects back on us today. Whom are you looking for? What did you come here to see?

The expectation for Mary is that Death gets the final word. Death is the enemy of this story. This is what Karl Barth calls “the great ‘no,’ the shadow that hangs over our human life and accompanies all our movements. It is the judgment which reads: You, your life or what you think is life has no meaning because it has no right to exist and therefore cannot last. Your life is rejected life! It has no value before God or before your fellow-being, not even before yourself!’ Death means that this ‘no’ has been pronounced over us. Death means that we inescapably wither and wilt, returning to dust and ashes. This is death as paid by sin.”

Without this Easter day we remain chained to these deaths, anticipating the great death that awaits us at the end of it all. But these expectations are thwarted. Something else happens. I heard an incredible story yesterday that perfectly summed up what this day is about. The Guardian news shared a report about an Iranian man named Saeed was about to be hung for the murder of a man named Abdollah whom he killed during a knife fight when they were both just teenagers. The riveting photos were captured by an Iranian photojournalist. In the first picture Abdollah’s mother is seen approaching the makeshift gallows where Saeed, the murderer stands, a noose around his neck. The mother goes up to her son’s killer and slaps him across the face.

Under sharia law a victim’s family is sometimes involved in the execution, so the scene so far is unremarkable. But what happens next is anything but ordinary. The woman moves towards Saeed again, only this time she reaches out not to strike him but to remove the noose from around the neck of blindfolded man. She looks him in the eye and says one word – “forgiven.” In one of the final photos the mothers of the two men, victim and murderer, embrace each other as they weep. How is such a thing possible?

Expecting to meet darkness, a noose around the throat. That’s why we start of this day putting ourselves in a position to take Death seriously, to remember that this is a story that begins at a tomb. Many of us showed up before the sun rose, like Mary, in the cold gray light of the Oakwood Cemetery, right smack in the middle of Death.

I love this service because it helps me get closer to the first Easter day. I can still feel that chill in the air, the aching tired of waking up so early. Of course some Easter’s are more dramatic than others, last year in particular being of note when we shouted “We truly believe” against a torrential downpour.

But regardless of the weather, we start the day driving down the empty, black streets. For me, this is an important ritual. I want to be there when we walk down to God’s Acre because I need Death to remind me just how truly miraculous this day really is. Today we reaffirm that Jesus defeated those Deaths that mark the way towards our final death. I need to be surprised again by the announcement Fran made this morning that “the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, will also give back life to our mortal bodies.”

The Good News is that we no longer live tethered to the expectations of meeting death and pain at the tomb. The Good News is that Jesus is ready to explode the boundaries of our imaginations, to surge past that which we thought was possible. Jesus is alive and ready to make a way where there was no way. The Good News is that through the cracks of our gnarled, broken world the light of Easter dawn is seeping through.

As the sun rises over the gravestones, as we declare “for us, for us the Lamb was slain” it’s easier to imagine that this is true. It gets harder when we move out of the pews and back into our hurting world. The difficult thing is to live a resurrected life as a reflection of this surging, boundary-breaking hope. More often than not we live like the Japanese solider who was sent to a remote island in the Philippines during World War II. After his comrades were killed he never received the news that the war was over. Even when others told him the news, showering him with leaflets from airplanes, he refused to believe it. For 29 years he continued to hide in the jungle, shooting at everyone who approached. How often we are like that soldier, still living our lives like we are in the middle of the battle. But the war is over! Death has been defeated! Jesus has made our sin his own!

The Good News is that the light gets in. We encounter radical, resurrection acts of forgiveness every day as we wait in hope for the day when we will finally see that Death toppled forever. I think of this promise during the sunrise service. We begin that service together at the top of a hill at the Oakwood Cemetery. After saying part of the liturgy there we process down to the Moravian section of the cemetery, our God’s Acre. But first Hubert sends parts of the band ahead of us. It’s a sort of Moravian version of surround sound. As we walk part of the band plays a chorale and another part responds. They play back and forth, back and forth.

When we begin making our way down you can hear, but not always see the first band in the distance. And in the morning light, just for a moment you can almost imagine what it will be like when our loved ones are finally given new bodies, the day when Easter will be a joyous reunion of those who went to sleep in Christ and have woken again at the last day.

The Good News of Easter is that one day we won’t have to send of our band ahead. One day we will begin to play those chorales at the top of the hill and then we’ll hear it. We will hear those chorale responses being sung by of our loved ones. Our voices will be met by the voices of John and Ben, Joshua and Peter, Lynn and Willa and Jim and Avery.

Did you come today expecting Jesus to raise the dead, to defeat all our deaths along the way? Whom are you looking for? How do you expect the world will look like now that the Holy Spirit has been let loose into it?

The gift of this Easter Day is that God meets us, however we answer these questions. Whether we are Mary who needs to hear Jesus say her name; whether we are Peter and the Beloved Disciple who need to see the evidence; or whether we sit with the other Disciples in hiding, still waiting. He meets us in the darkness of doubt, in the loneliness of despair.

He offers to us a faith “too mighty to be encompassed by certainty, to wonderful to be found only within the boundaries of our imagination.” He meets us at the tomb, ready to surpass all our expectations. And there he asks us, “whom are you looking for?”

Friends, he is not the tomb. He is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Hallelujah.

This is no time for a child to be born, With the earth betrayed by war & hate And a nova lighting the sky to warn That time runs out & the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born, In a land in the crushing grip of Rome; Honour & truth were trampled by scorn– Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born? The inn is full on the planet earth, And by greed & pride the sky is torn– Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

Madeleine L’Engle

After hearing Madeline L’Engle’s poem one of the strangest things about today’s Scriptures is the tense in which it is spoken. Today we heard Katherine read Mary’s song, the song that wells up in Mary upon a meeting with her cousin Elizabeth. But these words are not a prophecy. They aren’t a hopeful word about the future. Instead, Mary speaks to something that has already happened, an action that is complete.

In the beginning we can see how that makes sense. Yes, God has put Mary in a place of honor. She will be remembered for generations. This is evident even today as we remember Mary and her bold “yes” to God. But from here the song stops being so personal. The scope of Mary’s praise widens. God’s has shown strength with his arm, she explains. He has scattered the proud, brought down the powerful, lifted the lowly. There is more. The rich have been sent away without a dime in their pockets while the hungry feast at the banquet.

Actions completed. The words of someone who has seen God set the world right. We have to wonder, is Mary speaking ironically? Or has her joy blinded her to the reality around her? It can be hard for us to see what Mary sees, both is her day as is our own. Mary, born into utter poverty, about to give birth in the cold, stone walls of a barn. She has escaped the anxiety of stares and whispers about the pregnancy by hiding out with her cousin Elizabeth in a neighboring town. She will soon be an unwed, teenage mother, stigmatized by her people.

Her world reflects the harshness of her particular situation. Mary lives in a country under the fist of foreign occupiers. Her people are taxed and humiliated. Revolutionaries who dare to defy the ruling power are crucified, conspicuously left at busiest intersections. They are a warning to others who would consider standing up to the might of Rome.

So it is in our day. War and rumors of war. Potential genocide in the Central African Republic. Typhoons destroying entire villages. The one year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting. Polio reemerging in Syria and Somalia.

This is no time for a child to be born.

And yet, Mary sings. Instead of irony or expectation, this song is a moment of clarity about the reign of God, one sandwiched between humiliation, pain, stigma, and occupation. In it Mary names the impossible possibility. God is about to enter into the riskiness of this particular human life overshadowed by sickness, poverty and political oppression, and God will redeem everything through it.

Madeline L’Engel’s poem, The Risk of Birth, beautifully captures this sentiment. I’ve read her poem in tandem with Mary’s Song throughout the week. Both L’Engle and Luke see birth as a metaphor for what is happening to the cosmos as Immanuel, God with us, breaks onto the scene. Mary’s song is reminiscent of a song sung by another mother, Hannah in the book of first Samuel. It also has parallels to the song sung by Zechariah upon the birth of his son, John.

Yet, I have found myself drawn to stories of a different way of welcoming children as I wrestle through Mary’s insistence at God’s already fulfilled promise, in spite of it all. There is something brave and wild about this woman saying these things at this time in the world, a joyful hope that has drawn me to friends and writers who wait to welcome children through adoption. These friends have helped me hear a different kind of longing and different kind of hope in Mary’s Song.

This last Monday when I received an email from my friend Rachel updating me on the status of her domestic adoption. She wrote, “We’ve said yes to three babies in the last two weeks – each with very different, and potentially complicated circumstances. Two are due in December, one in February. There are three possible ethnicities, none of which are the same as our own. So we are praying and waiting and trying to see the waiting as essential, instead of an obstacle.”

She continued saying, “I am currently teaching the history of Judaism to my 7th graders (what a task) and there are so many rich lessons there about the keeping of promises – it has been a timely reminder.”

My friend Rachel helps me see what Mary sees. She sees that God’s redemption is pieced together out of uncertainty, the vulnerability of opening her life up to a child that may not be able to be her’s, in the waiting that has no specific date in mind. Yet it is rooted in a promised hope that is so real it is as if it has already happened. Her hope is being lived forward, instead of backwards. And like Mary, Rachel reminds me that God surprises us in the unknown. Like Mary she sees that God is making something out of all of this, rather than in spite of it.

This week I also read Susan Smartt Cook’s account of waiting for the arrival of her nephew. Contemplating this Advent season she writes about her sister’s adoption “my sister is adopting a little boy from Uganda and I will join her for the journey across the ocean to meet a new nephew and bring him to his new home. There are no Braxton Hicks this time, no back pain, cramps, or leaking fluid to signal a slow and steady start. There’s just a cold, quiet phone. She turns up the ringer, goes to bed, and wakes up hoping for the call. The watched pot never boiling, she stokes the flame of her hope for a child not yet her own. She waits with agony and disbelief that these wheels will grind into motion, the court date will be set, and the final stretch of the journey will begin. She waits with grace and patience, recognizing the cry of the orphan reverberating in her own heart. Compassion wells up within, and her heart expands.”[i]

I wonder if this Advent season it would help us hear Mary’s Song in different way if we put ourselves in the shoes of Rachel and Susan. With them we wait, sometimes anxiously, sometimes in anger, sometimes patiently for God to make himself present in the brokenness and pain of our world. But we are always shocked into action by his appearance, always caught off guard when he finally comes. The phone rings in the middle of the night. The angels appear to the shepherds and to Mary without warning. We are standing there with our arms open, without a crib or diapers or a car seat, only with fully formed love and hope to guide us. Like Mary, we receive a child already named, a child that comes from another. God’s Son. Jesus, the Redeemer.

Even in the waiting, in the gritty disappointment of our every day, what Mary’s Song tells us is that history shifted from the moment the angel appeared to her. Everything did change. But that shift doesn’t look like a revolution as we know it. It doesn’t look like a victory. It looks like an impoverished, pregnant teenager. It looks like a family waiting for a phone call from a social worker. It looks like paperwork and home studies and the hard work of waiting. That’s how it is here at the beginning and that’s how it will end. His kingdom will be made up of beggars, prostitutes, outlaws, and children. The King of Eternity takes away the sins of the world by taking that sin upon himself. Justice will come through the injustice of the cross. The revolution he initiates comes out of death, not out of the sword. God loses in order to redeem. And so do we.

No, This is no time for a child to be born, With the earth betrayed by war & hate And a nova lighting the sky to warn That time runs out & the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born, In a land in the crushing grip of Rome; Honour & truth were trampled by scorn– Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born? The inn is full on the planet earth, And by greed & pride the sky is torn– Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

The youth at our church have shown a lot of interest in the release of the new movie version of Orson Scott Card’s book, Ender’s Game. I’ve been looking for resources on things we could do with this movie with our youth group. And since I didn’t find much, I am writing up my own resource after seeing the movie yesterday. Hopefully it can spark some ideas for others.

Let me preface by saying that I haven’t read the book. Therefore, I don’t have a dog in the movie vs. book fight. And I’m not here to quibble over the differences. There are also certainly going to be some spoilers in this post, so if you’re looking for a surprise ending, read no further. I also don’t want to comment on the horrible human being Card seems to be. And with that…

I found Ender’s Game could be divided into two lessons: one a Biblical lesson and the other some interesting theological discussion. Today I’ll look at the biblical parallel that mainly plays out in the first part of the movie.

DavidEven at the description of Ender’s Game I had a fairly good sense that Ender followed a lot of the same patterns as the biblical character of David who we read about in First and Second Samuel. Ender is the last child, the child who really isn’t supposed to be much. He’s not physically imposing, but there’s something different about him. He has a gift and a calling. That sounds a lot like David of Scripture (see 1 Sam 16).

There are also some interesting parallels between Bonzo and king Saul. There could be some good discussion that comes up around appearance, power, and leadership, contrasting the styles of the two. There is also a Jonathan-figure, Petra, the only true friend Ender manages to hold onto. This would be a good way to talk about kinship, friends, and those who support us in faith.

I think youth leaders could also find some material in discussing the complicated relationship between calling in the future and who we are now. Many of our youth see themselves as “future people.” All this is practice for “something else” (we reenforce this in the church by calling them “the future of the church”). One of the things we need to teach youth is that their journey as Christians, as people involved in the justice and mercy of world, begins now, not in the future. There is important stuff in Ender’s Game about being made up of the sum of the things we live everyday. A great lesson on formation and discipleship, as well as living fully in the present.

Another important part of the David/Ender story is the flawed hero. Ender isn’t perfect. He has an ambivalent but calculating attitude towards violence. He has trouble with authority. He messes up. He’s in transition throughout the movie. That’s just like David. And it’s just like each of us. Many of our youth think being a Christian is like being a superhero. It means having it all together. But the Christian life isn’t about that – it’s about grace. It’s about being forgiven, continuing to walk even when the path is unclear, and finding others to walk that path with you. This is a good place to begin a discussion about doubt, and how doubt doesn’t have to paralyze us but can help us bring new questions and parts of ourselves and God into the light. Bringing this into the flawed life of David is an easy connection.

And, finally, the two characters (Cornel Graff and Major Anderson) are helpful for a discussion of different experiences and understandings regarding the character of God in our lives and in Scripture. I think it’s great to acknowledge to youth the complexity of the character of God, particularly as God relates to the person of David, and to Ender. How would they characterize each? How do they see this working out in Ender’s life? In David’s? Which “God” do they experience more often in their lives? Do they think one is a more accurate picture of God or is God something like both?

The NYTimes recently published an article about the revived process of accountability in the Mennonite church between our now-deceased, famed theologian, John Howard Yoder, and the victims of his sexual abuse. I’m not an expert on Yoder, and, like most people, I too am realizing that there is much I didn’t know about the extent of Yoder’s sexual coercion – both its content and its reach.

But I have been surprised by the number of people who were unaware this was part of Yoder’s past. I started reading Yoder in graduate school mere weeks before a lecture in an ethics class required to be taken by all students in which I was informed of his misdeeds, the four-year accountability process that ensued, and the results of reconciliation just before his death. It has been distressing to know the extent of abuse was greater than previously thought. It is distressing that so many victims have not been able to heal. Our failures as a church, of the process, are distressing and frightening. Yet, to call this a “cover up,” or to infer that somehow the church turned a blind eye is disingenuous. The truth is this – we failed.

The way I experience this failure is not as a victim or an insider to the process but as a reader and learner, someone whose theology and practice have been formed by reading Yoder over the past decade. I have never known what to do with Yoder the abuser and Yoder the theologian. I cannot reconcile the two. And throughout my time reading him I have always been told to section off the man, that we all have shortcomings. I’ve been told that we would have no theologians left to read if we judged them by the measure of their own theology.

It’s true that there is something difficult for me about certain theologians. I don’t give much pause for the broken marriages left behind by Cornel West, the multiple affairs of Paul Tillich, or Augustine’s common-law wife and son, whom he abandoned at the urging of his mother.

There are other writers, Barth and Yoder in particular, whose relationships with women are haunting. These women are always around the edges, in the margins, standing in the footnotes.

It is, perhaps, more common knowledge that Barth had a 35 year relationship with a woman named Charlotte von Kirschbaum, a woman who sacrificed her life for Barth. Because of the love she shared with the married Barth she endured social stigma and was ostracized by the church. Often considered the co-writer of Dogmatics, she put her own theology under Barth’s submission because she believed in his work.

As much as I am pained by Lollo’s story she is not the one who haunts my reading of Barth. Instead, my ear is tuned to Nelly Barth, the faithful wife, who endured the humiliation of her husband moving his emotional and spiritual mistress into her home. I often think of her, with so little education, arranged in marriage to a man who carried the picture of another woman in his wallet his whole life, 32 and already the mother of five. What choice did she have but to stay, to endure, to make the best of this life she had been dealt with this powerful man whose gifts were so obvious to her? It is in Nelly’s voice that I read Barth.

Of course this is a very different situation than the coercive sexual advances of a powerful theologian over his unwilling female victims, victims like Carolyn Heggen. Yet, these women share the experience of being shuttled to the background, of being told that we must ignore them in spirit as we solider on to real stuff of these men’s lives.

I want to believe there is a better way to encounter the writings of these men, encounters that are not dismissive or that simply throw our hands in the air. It may be that allowing these women to rise up on to the pages as we read them is the place we can start. For the Mennonite church this will quite literally mean hearing the voices of women who were abused by Yoder. For Barth all that we may have is Nelly’s ghost, reminding us that she is always there.

As a pastor, and a mother of two, I’ve witnessed Emily Timbol’s story over and over again. The second-class citizenship handed to women without children on Mother’s Day. The thick silence that settles over infertility and pregnancy loss. The priority of family church activities that often leaves adults without children out in the cold. As I read her recent post in her.meneutics I recognized my own culpability.

But I also noticed repetition of the phrase “desire to reproduce,” used three times in her short essay. I found the frequency of this phrase interesting because I wouldn’t characterize my decision to have children as a “desire to reproduce.” That phrase calls up images of anxious populating, a desperate attempt to control history through the production of little Christians.

That may be the narrative Timbol hears most often, but it is not my story. In Anabaptism children are considered beloved and central, but at baptism they declare their own decision to be a follower of Christ. They aren’t a possession that we control.

For Mennonites, like all Christians, children belong to God and to the community. And this is where I’d like to offer a different perspective to Timbol’s. I recognize her giftedness and wholeness without children. But I disagree with her that children “are a blessing God gives to some people, not all.”

I’m guessing children have been a blessing to Timbol just as friends without children have found a blessing in my little ones. I have seen this happen in remarkable ways throughout the life of my children. Isak and Arianna, content for now to be without children, faithfully organized meals for our family after our son was born. Nate, 23-years old and recently married, takes his turn caring for our children during nursery time. And Meghan, content in her singleness, is entering her second year as my daughter’s Sunday school teacher. Each of them, in their own way, has made our children their blessing.

But the biblical injunction to welcome children, so central to Jesus’ ministry, doesn’t end with those without biological or adopted children. Welcome is a challenge for people like me, as well. As we approach the question of our children’s education I am reminded that truly welcoming other people’s children may mean the decision to send ours to an under-achieving public school. Welcoming children means the phrase “I’ve already done my tour” should never escape my lips when I am asked to teach Sunday school as an older adult.

Most importantly, welcoming children means reminding mine that their identity isn’t found in whether or not they have children or not, but in the ways that they answers Jesus’ call to excel in justice and mercy towards the poorest in our world, including children. It also means that those of us who parent children through birth or adoption find ways to open our lives and our families to those who do not parent full-time.

What I hear throughout Timbol’s post are the ways the church has sectioned off parenting into those with and those without. This has clearly caused a lot of hurt and pain for Timbol and those who are told they are incomplete without engaging in a particular kind of parenting. But I hope that we can all see Jesus as challenging us in new ways to “welcome little children,” and that the call on each of our lives to welcome the vulnerable would be a central part of Christian identity.